George Barris looks out from behind the wheel of his Batmobile, one of several of his creations.

Customizing legend is bringing Batmobile panache to Prius

By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES  He built the Clampetts' jalopy for The Beverly Hillbillies, TV's original Batmobile, the Monkeemobile and KITT, the chatty Trans Am in the first Knight Rider series.

Now auto-customizing legend George Barris, 83, says he's taking a bold voyage into the 21st century: He's trying to give dowdy hybrids like the Toyota Prius his distinctive, flamboyant touch.

Why hybrids? "I love the challenges of doing something different," says Barris, who has redone about six Priuses so far and is working on his latest and greatest.

Hybrids could use a sexier image, he figured. The current model of the Prius is so bulbous that Barris recalls politely telling Toyota executives that it looked tubby and turtle-like.

The latest custom version that he's creating might not pass for a Maserati, but it is definitely sleeker. It has upward tilting doors, flared fenders, a stunning two-tone paint job of metallic gold and orange, yellow-tinted glass, hulking 20-inch rims and panels over the windows to make it look lower and more ferocious.

Progress on the car was far enough along to show it at a major trade show in October. Barris still plans to add a notebook computer, lithium-ion battery kit for 75-mile-per-gallon hybrid performance, an LED lighting system and a pair of rear video cameras that will allow the side mirrors to be removed.

All this will cost more than $100,000, in addition to the more than $20,000 to buy the stock Prius.

"I love taking something that nobody wants to do anything with and make it look better," he says. He's given the Barris treatment over the decades to snowmobiles, boats, golf carts — even bicycles. Hybrids were a natural.

Barris has named this custom Prius the Zimbra, which just happens to also be the name of the Silicon Valley company that its owner, Satish Dharmaraj, co-founded.

"It's gorgeous," says Dharmaraj of the evolving Barris project on his car.

His Saratoga, Calif.-based company is involved in the next generation of e-mail and messaging, and Dharmaraj is a self-described "high-tech nerd."

Dharmaraj says he loved the Prius, but wanted something hotter, so he turned to Barris.

"At this point, (Barris is) doing it purely because he loves it — not the money, not the glory or the fame," Dharmaraj says.

He lauds Barris' creativity and attention to detail. When the upholstery didn't turn out the way Barris liked, Dharmaraj says he fired the contractor and went to another. "He's crazy about perfection."

Perfection can have a downside, however. "It's taken much longer than I thought," Dharmaraj says.

It's easy to see why. Barris is a celebrity in his own right, a busy guy. He attends about 25 car shows and other events a year where he signs autographs, kicks tires and conjures ideas. His shop in the Toluca Lake section of Los Angeles has become a must-see stop for tourists who are car fans. They poke around the showroom and check out some of the hundreds of celebrity-filled photographs or walls of collectibles.

"He's a legend," says Jim Thompsen, 38, of Waseca, Minn., who came to see the shop recently along with brother Matt, 34, and collect an autograph. They've idolized Barris "since we were kids."

A big highlight is the Batmobile. Actually, Barris had two of them at the shop.

As Barris tells it, the producers of the show came to him trying to find a fancy ride for TV's Batman and Robin. He had three weeks and a $15,000 budget. Barris had an old Ford Futura concept car from the mid-1950s that did the trick. He reshaped the fins, added exhaust pipes and lots of other features and a star was born.

The car for The Munsters, another mid-1960s show about a ghoulish family, came from putting together some old Ford Model Ts with a hearse.

Nowadays, Barris doesn't build much on the property. Rather, he farms out work to five licensed shops around the country that he knows and trusts. Some of his jobs, including the Priuses, are basically one-of-a-kind-cars, each different. Others are limited-production runs, like a redo of Chrysler's new Dodge Challenger coupe.

He says he's also kept active in Hollywood. Lately, Barris has been looking into a design for a possible remake of the 1963 road movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and a project around cartoon character Betty Boop.

His grown son and daughter are active in the business, but Barris himself, now a widower, still shows up for work regularly. He says his staff numbers about 10.

His advice for anyone who will listen: "As you get older, don't retire. Go and do more work."

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